Introduction

My name is Jaana Mielonen and I am now an Ontario Fire Ranger.

I fight forest fires.

This blog will describe my experiences as a rookie. Please check in whenever :)

***This post covers the basics of how I got here, but the rest will describe my actual experiences and mishaps.

Officially I am a Resource Technician, Type 1 for the Fire Management Headquarters - a division of the Ministry of Natural Resources. I am based in Cochrane, which is slightly north of Timmins. Click here to see it on a map.

Cochrane relative to where you are:

• Mindemoya - 547 km (7.5 hrs)
• Toronto - 724km (9.5 hrs)
• Sudbury - 403 km (6 hrs)
• Waterloo - 802 km (10 hrs)

So you may ask how I got into this. It was simple: I saw a booth at the University of Waterloo, asked them a billion questions and after a couple days of thinking, I signed up for my 5 day training course. I've always wanted to do something challenging and this sounded perfect. But I was nervous. Very nervous indeed, but even more determined to do it.

Preparation Courses:

In order to apply, I had to complete the following:

• SP 100 - This is a 5-day training course you are required to successfully complete. We learned the all the basics of a forest fire itself, how to set up pumps, lay hose, set up camp, load enter and exit helicopters, navigate using a compass, as well as the basics about safety and nutrition.
• Standard First Aid - Learning what to do with various injuries...hopefully I won't have to use it!
• Physical Readiness Exam (PRE Fit) - A test of your cardiovascular endurance and strength. I passed with flying colours :)

Getting Hired:

In March, I applied online to EVERY base in Ontario (there's 15), but this didn't prove to be very useful, so I called EVERY base multiple times and sent most of them my resume and cover letter. By middle April I still didn't have a job. I got nervous.

Then on the 15th of April I got a call from the Cochrane base. They didn't have anything available, but we had a phone interview and he asked if I could start on the 26th (just ten days away!). My manager agreed to let me end my contract early and on Monday, April 19th I was offered a job. Woo! Now I started to get excited.

But I had less than ten days to do a crazy amount of stuff including buying all my supplies, packing, moving all my belongings into storage, and finding a sublet, all while working and training the person taking my job. So I got stressed.

Purchases:

I had never worked in construction or anything, so I had quite a few purchases to make to get ready. Here's a brief overview:

• Steel-toe work boots
• (Spare pair) steel-toe work boots
• Wool work socks (24 pairs!)
• Hunting Knife
• Compass

Getting There

As you probably saw above, Cochrane is in the middle of nowhere really. And I didn't have a car. So I had three options:

1. Flying - $300 and only about 2 hours
2. Bus - $178, but a full 14 hours
3. Train - $140, only 12 hours

Before I had time to decide I found out that I could get a ride from Barrie, due to a crazy coincidence. A guy I knew from first year just got hired by the same base, so we drove up together. We did it on one tank of gas! Once we arrived we checked out the town and found the following:

- a large polar bear statue

- a destitute looking trailer park

- the Ontario Northland train station (it runs the Polar Bear Express)

- a sprawling residential area (approx 3000 people live in town, 5000 if you include the surrounding area)

- the short main street which has a bulk food store (yes!), a couple clothing stores, a video store, small movie theatre (which serves Farquhar's ice cream), some cafes and other random small thins

- a surprising amount of chains (KFC, Tim Hortons, Best Western, Canadian Tire/Mark's Work Wearhouse, Giant Tiger, Guardian Pharmacy, ValuMart, HomeHardware, M&M Meats, Timbr Mart, Esso and three banks)

Finding Somewhere to Live

There are like nooo places to rent in Cochrane (not that I could find online and in the newspaper). So we settled on a 2bdr apartment we found at the Chimo Motel. It was expensive, but the pictures didn't look too bad and it had cable/internet included.

BAD IDEA. Total false advertising.

The place stunk, it was super tiny and had no closets or dressers not to mention that everything was really old and overall it was a shit hole. We convinced him to give us a slightly better unit for the same price, but we immediately started looking for a new place. This was hard.

At this point, I still couldn't quite believe that I was in Cochrane, about to start a job fighting forest fires, and that Matt was there too. But I had to believe it because we started work at 8am the next day!

That's it for the intro. From now on I'll be posting summaries every once in awhile (approx every week) so make sure you check in!

- Jaana